


don't hold LB (you don't have to sprint)

by rainbow irises (oakleaf)



Series: games of Halo at 25 or 6 to 4 [1]
Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter RPF
Genre: Established Relationship, Falling In Love, Fluff, Implied demiromantic character, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-10
Updated: 2014-08-10
Packaged: 2018-02-12 14:09:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,961
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2112846
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oakleaf/pseuds/rainbow%20irises
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Joel and Gavin get together.</p>
<p>And then Joel falls in love, slowly, between coffee and Halo, and somewhere along the line they forget to tell people they're an item.</p>
<p>
  <i>This was originally titled "games of Halo at 25 or 6 to 4 (the "don't hold LB" remix)".<br/>Now with a new summary and 10% more editing!</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	don't hold LB (you don't have to sprint)

**Author's Note:**

> An expansion of my piece [games of Halo at 25 or 6 to 4](http://rainbow-irises.tumblr.com/post/91448584000/games-of-halo-at-25-or-6-to-4) (link goes to tumblr) which I wrote for UPJ.

Joel is 34 years old when Gavin first lands on American soil.

Gavin is an over-eager, excitable ball of energy, amused by the new country he finds himself in.

Joel is swept up by the enthusiasm as they work together on Shorts and Red vs Blue, and genuinely misses the man when he returns to England.

(Joel is inordinately fond of Gavin already, but even in hindsight their first few meetings aren’t moments of love at first sight.)

-

Joel is 36 when Gavin comes onto the scene as the director of season 5 of RvB.

This new role fits Gavin like a glove, his natural creativity and charisma hard to deny. With new blood at the helm and the series as popular as ever, the office is reinvigorated.

Joel spends hours in the recording booth, listening to Gavin’s British accent in his ear and slowly it becomes as natural to hear it as any of the others in the office.

All too soon, Gavin’s visa expiry date is drawing close and he’s booked his ticket to go in a week’s time.

Joel doesn’t tell anyone the reason he stays back in the office that night. But Gavin wanders into the office space and sees Joel messing around in Halo and Joel cheers inside at getting to spend a little extra time with their British import.

(He doesn’t question why, but he knows that the younger man fascinates him, and if he isn’t wrong, that feeling is mutual.)

It’s three o’clock in the morning and about that many drinks later when Gavin, slightly inebriated, asks Joel out.

Joel stares at him.

He doesn’t expect that yet.

Gavin opens his mouth to talk his way out of it when Joel’s brain finally catches up and lets him answer.

"Are you serious?" 

"Yes."

The quiet sincerity in Gavin’s voice is enough to convince Joel that this isn’t the dumbest thing that he’s ever done, and that everyone (especially the one he’s been thinking of for God knows how long) deserves a chance, even if he doesn’t feel the cliche fluttering of his heart or butterflies in his stomach.

The make arrangements to meet for coffee at lunchtime, and Joel drives Gavin home with a wide smile on both their faces.

Gavin flies out a few days later and while they’re on separate continents, they play Halo at 3am, Gavin’s time, and make Skype calls of questionable quality (Gavin always complains).

They don’t mention the dates.

-

Gavin comes back, again and again, and Joel is always the first in the office to know after he lands.

(Gavin later tells the story of how Geoff would ask whom he was texting and then laugh and tell him that Joel was single.)

The other constant is that they always go out for drinks, of both the caffeinated and alcoholic variety.

-

Gavin tries to steal a kiss one night, the night before he leaves once again for England, but Joel turns at the last minute and it becomes a peck on the cheek instead.

Joel blames someone else for distracting him, but the true reason is that he’s not sure if he’s in love yet.

Joel is 37 when he finds out through the grapevine that Gavin gets a girlfriend and Joel can’t even blame him, because they’re not together, or if they are, they don’t talk about it.

(Gavin tells him over coffee when he next comes to the US about familial pressures and a friend in the same boat, and how that news was never intended to reach him. But for now, Joel doesn’t think about soft lips against his cheek and thanks the heavens that the ghost doesn’t drift across his lips.)

-

Joel is 39 when Gavin begins to stay pretty much permanently in America.

Joel freaks out.

He never really thought about the permanence, and a week before Gavin arrives it hits him in the face like a sledgehammer and he suddenly straightens out.

There are thoughts of inadequacy, of age gaps and IMDB entries, of Gavin deserving more than he has.

They swirl around just below the surface and make it impossible to think. He thinks it’s just going to get worse when Gavin finally gets here.

But Gavin wanders over to Joel’s desk on his first day in the office and leans over Joel’s shoulder, peering at the screen, reminiscent of the night years ago when Gavin first asked him out.

Joel tries to smile, but the thoughts that have been clouding his mind come rushing forward, and he manages a grimace.

"Coffee?" Gavin asks.

Joel considers his choices. One of them leads to him avoiding Gavin for ages, while still hoping that there was enough of something there that the Brit wouldn’t give up and one day, maybe, they’d get back together again.

The other is a leap of faith.

He takes it.

It isn’t as if he hasn’t made the same call before.

"Now?" he asks, looking around for his keys.

(They arrive back with coffee for everyone, but Burnie is pretty curious as to why that took them an hour.)

Joel is toeing the line of forty when he invites Gavin out for dinner, and that’s when they decide that they’re going to do it properly this time.

Joel tells Gavin about time and age and the vague fears and Gavin tells him not to worry because he’s too young and directs Joel to the state of the stock market instead.

(Anyone that can do that on a date is either brave or beautiful, and Joel doesn’t mind either one.)

Joel takes Gavin home.

"I know we haven’t been properly dating until now, but, can I kiss you?" he asks, biting his lip, the rehearsed words slipping off his tongue.

Gavin responds by cupping Joel’s face and giving him a quick peck on the lips. He then grins like a maniac and rushes inside.

- 

Geoff grabs Joel the next morning for a coffee run.

It unsurprisingly turns into an interrogation.

“Why did Gavin practically bounce off the fucking walls last night after he got home?”

Joel doesn’t know if he should lie, but it’s not as if Geoff isn’t now one of his closest friends and if it’s going to be a regular thing (Joel hopes it will be) he should probably come clean.

“We went on a date. It went well.”

Geoff just hums and smiles, which makes Joel kind of worried - especially as the smile is more predatory that pleased.

By the time they arrive back in the office, Joel is looking more frazzled than usual and Geoff looks rather proud of himself. Gavin catches on and looks at Joel with a slight frown.

“He knows,” Joel says, and Gavin looks even more concerned.

“Don’t worry buddy,” Geoff says, far too cheerfully, “it’ll be fine.”

He grins like the Cheshire cat for a moment, then that smile softens to something more serious.

“I’ll keep it under wraps if you need me to.”

“Ta, Geoff. At least for now,” Gavin answers, relieved, glancing at Joel with a tiny smile on his face.

(Joel thinks of that smile sometimes, and maybe that was why he started falling in love.)

-

The next couple of months pass in a kind of blur, what with RvB recording starting back up again, and Achievement Hunter rapidly becomes the massive hit that Geoff had always wanted it to be.

They get busy and they  _get busy_  and suddenly Joel finds himself being interrogated for the second time in a few months when Jack saunters over to his desk - saunters! Jack only saunters when he’s got juicy information – oh.

Joel’s eyebrows draw together as he squints at one of his closest friends.

“You seem really happy these days,” Jack says, wide smile on his face.

Joel squints more. Jack’s innocent act isn’t fooling him.

“Y’know who else is really happy? Gavin.”

“… Did Geoff tell you?

“You told Geoff but not me?”

“So Geoff didn’t tell you?”

“No, you keep coming to get Gavin when it’s lunch and when you get back you look like you’ve smiled too much but you can’t keep it off your face any more, and Gavin gets you coffee but not the rest of us, and he’s started talking with his hands the same way you do.”

Joel’s stunned silent.

“I’m really happy for you,” Jack murmurs, and Joel’s eyes snap up, gaze suddenly intense.

“Thank you.”

- 

Joel is 41 and Rooster Teeth is a hundred thousand times the success they hoped when they first started the company.

Gavin comes over one night, giggling and smiling the same way he does just before he pulls out a camera.

Joel looks at him a bit askance, because they’re alone and Gavin wouldn’t play a prank on him while at his place, right?

He shrugs and lets Gavin in anyway.

“Did you know that we never told any of the new guys that we’re dating?” Gavin says.

“Yes, thank you, I had a nice day,” Joel replies, eyebrows raised but a fond smile on his face.

“Yeah, the only people that know are Geoff and Jack. I think Ryan suspects,” Joel continues.

“Do the other people really not know?”

“Yeah.”

“Huh,” Gavin says, and he has that open-eyed look of realisation and Joel knows right then and there that his heart should have burst but Gavin – the one who threatens overfill it with happiness – is holding it together.

“Well, do you want to tell them?” Joel asks, because he’s sure of them now.

“Can we mess with them instead?”

They bicker over Halo about the best ways to pretend they have massive amounts of unresolved sexual tension without revealing that that tension is, in fact, resolved.

They both agree it doesn’t matter if they do spill the beans, but hey, it wasn’t like they didn’t all mess with each other on a semi-regular basis anyway.

- 

Joel is 41 when he is sure that he is in love with Gavin Free.

He relaxes into Gavin when they’re together and can’t really sleep when he’s gone. Gavin knows, without asking, what he needs and he tries to return the favour. And their habit of talking with their hands has led to slipped controllers and clashing, flailing hands on more than one occasion.

And it wasn’t love at first sight, because Joel remembers silences over coffee when he waited with tense shoulders, and he remembers nights when he could rest easily alone. Joel knows from experience that he doesn’t fall in love quickly, but he’s here now, and that’s what matters.

So when Gavin leans over and pecks Joel on the cheek after Joel pops in after lunch one day to talk to Geoff and Jack, Joel just smirks and tells Gavin he’s the one explaining what just happened.

Gavin blushes red as both Ray and Michael turn to him with questioning looks mixed with varying amounts of (fake, hopefully) anger, and Joel just laughs as Gavin’s misfortune (and his fortune at ending up together with someone so beautiful and funny and amazing).

-

(Joel is 42 when his phone buzzes on a Monday afternoon.

He picks it up and reads the message, grin widening as he savours each word.

“Burnie wants you down on the set because Gavin just outed you guys on the podcast.”

He goes to the podcast set and confirms it for two of his old friends and his heart lifts at the smile Gavin gives him when he enters the room, and again after the chaste kiss, and again when Gavin’s head brushes Joel’s shoulder.

It might have been a long time in the making but he’d never trade it for anything else.

Especially when Gavin smiles that small, private smile again.)

**Author's Note:**

> The title of this piece is basically one reference after another.
> 
> 25 or 6 to 4 is the name of a song whose title is derived from the fact that it was written at 25 or 26 minutes to four o’clock in the morning (i.e. 3:34 or 3:35 am).
> 
> Left bumper is the key used in Halo Reach to sprint, according to Yahoo answers.
> 
> If you liked this, you can find me on tumblr at [rainbow-irises](http://rainbow-irises.tumblr.com/)


End file.
